


salvation (my heart for yours)

by Fiselis



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Wings, Angst, First Kiss, Last Kiss, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, basically i mashed together scenes and stuff and made like. kawoshin soup, this all started bc i wanted kaworu to have wings, yikes lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 16:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20245504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiselis/pseuds/Fiselis
Summary: Lingering above, the stars hang, waiting for their own to return home. But sometimes home can be found, in a new place, with new people, new experiences. Growing pains lead to permanent hurts, until all that is left is the raw and unaltered feeling of first and only love.Kaworu is angelic, to Shinji. Until he turns out to actually be one, in which case, things get a bit more complicated.





	salvation (my heart for yours)

**Author's Note:**

> for the past 2 months i have thought of nothing but kaworu and how shinji is a little bastard who i relate to a little too much
> 
> hope you enjoy :3

Shinji was alone.

Even in the largest crowd of people, even surrounded by his friends, he was alone. His mind was empty of thoughts, his throat tight, holding back words to fill the endless silence that shrouded him. He couldn’t bear it anymore, no one understood.

Getting into the Eva was all he had. Yet, everytime he got out, he never wanted to get back in. Memories of the pain of broken limbs that remained perfectly intact, or choking on the taste of blood, all would flash sporadically before his vision. His chest would heave under the pressure of LCL filling his lungs, the momentary feeling of drowning sending his heart racing.

Like swallowing a pill, Shinji entered the Eva.

  
  


-

  
  


Blood red seawater lapped at his shoes, red, just like Unit 02. Just like Asuka.

Seeing Asuka like  _ that _ made his skin crawl. Shinji scratched at his forearm, but nothing was there. He felt disgusting,  _ wrong,  _ and more than ever, alone. The setting sun beat down on him, its golden rays casting an eerie glow over the water. This world was ruined, and so was he. 

As he shrank down into the depths of his sense of self, the world around him faded. Swirling in darkness, the beach long since faded away, Shinji was finally able to breathe.

A gentle hum broke him out of his daydream.

Somehow, without noticing, a young boy had joined him on the shoreline. Perched atop a rock sat a silver haired boy, about Shinji’s age, it seemed. His face was hidden, a soft tune turning into a beautiful song left his lips. Shinji was entranced, watching the way the wind twirled and danced through the silver strands of the boys hair. Around his neck was a black and red collar, stark against his almost white skin. He seemed to glow in the fading light as the sky began to darken. Shinji felt as though the slightest movement, or even a single word uttered, would send this apparition away. 

But then, the song ceased, and Shinji faced reality.

“One of the greatest inventions of the Lilin, I would say,” The boy spoke, singsongy and smooth. Shinji felt his heart beat harder, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Was he afraid again? But of what, some kid?

The boy turned to him, offering the first genuine smile Shinji had seen in a long time. Brilliant red irises that were so unnatural, yet oddly comforting, that held his own like a forgotten embrace. 

“Wouldn’t you agree, Shinji Ikari?”

  
  


\--

  
  


Another day of testing, another day of blurred faces, more orders, and consistent badgering. Everything was getting under Shinji’s skin, even Rei’s ghostlike demeanor. He just couldn’t take it any longer. 

Sitting on a hard metal bench in a forgotten hallway of NERV HQ was the closest Shinji could get to comfort. He couldn’t return home, no, not with Misato being out and about. Or the fact that Asuka’s stuff was still there. And memories of her. 

Shinji turned his music louder.

Just as he was closing his eyes, slouched uncomfortably against the icy cold wall, he felt a presence before him. How could someone have found him? His eyes blinked open, meeting red. 

“Kaworu? What are you doing here?”

“What are you listening to?” Kaworu ignored Shinji’s question, instead sitting down beside him. “Can I join you?”   
  
“U-uh, yeah, sure,” Shinji offered Kaworu an earbud, to which he gratefully took. The two listened in silence, their shoulders just barely brushing, but enough touch to send Shinji’s heart pounding. He couldn’t even hear the music, let alone when it had ended, just the overwhelming feeling of  _ Kaworu _ beside him.

When Kaworu pulled out the earbud, Shinji awkwardly followed suit. 

“I liked it. I like your music,” Kaworu murmured, handing the earbud back. Shinji took it, but flinched when Kaworu’s fingertips brushed his palm. “Where are you going after this?”

“W-well I--Normally we take showers and then head home. But I don’t really want to go back there to be honest, so--” Shinji stammered, yanking his hand away as his cheeks burned. 

“Home?” Kaworu looked distant, his usual smile dropping into the faintest of frowns. “I don’t believe I have a home.”

Shinji raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t NERV give you a place to stay?”

Kaworu nodded. “Oh, a place to stay, of course. But definitely not a home. A home brings happiness, joy. Hope. It doesn’t have to be physical, either.” Kaworu paused, regarding Shinji with an odd glimmer in his eyes. “Actually, maybe I  _ do  _ have a home, after all. At least, maybe someday I will.”

“I’d…. I’d like one too,” Shinji couldn’t really understand what Kaworu was saying, but he enjoyed hearing him speak. 

“Then let's look for our home together, then, yes?” Kaworu stood, offering a hand. 

Shinji awkwardly took it, and nervously smiled. “Y-yeah, but can we shower first?”

  
  


\--

  
  


Steam filled the room, heating up Shinji’s flesh, hot water running over his skin. If it could get any hotter, Shinji would probably be burned. Silently, he wished for it to be hotter.

“Kaworu, this whole place is empty besides us. You don’t have to shower next to me if you don’t want to,” Shinji said. 

“Do you not enjoy my presence?”

“I do!! I do, I just--” But there was something that caught his eye, interrupting his thoughts. 

Kaworu’s back was turned to him, revealing something to Shinji that he felt he didn’t deserve to see. Large, deep scars ruined the visage of pure, pale skin. Two, positioned right by the blades of Kaworu’s shoulders, angry looking. Like past pain, pain that Shinji could understand, but not physical like the scars before him.

“Shinji? Are you okay?” Kaworu turned, concern etched into his face. 

“Your scars, what happened? And why do you wear that collar?”

Kaworu didn’t move, his expression showing a rare emotion: surprise. But, just as quickly as it came, it disappeared behind his usual calm demeanor. 

“I don’t think it would be wise to talk about it now. Not here,” Kaworu smiled. “But maybe some other day.”

Shinji nodded, unsure. “Yeah, okay.”

Silence hung over them for a little while longer, until they both decided to sit and enjoy the steam. Despite the heat of the room around them, Shinji felt unnaturally cold skin brush, then encapsulate his hand. Kaworu looked at him earnestly. 

“Shinji, I--”

The lights went out. Shinji pulled his hand away. “I guess it’s time for us to go home.”

Kaworu stood, his disappointment painfully evident behind the tense smile. “I want nothing but happiness for you, Shinji Ikari.”

Shinji looked up at him. “Huh?”

“It means I love you.”

\---

“It’s simple, just play the notes you feel, the ones you’re drawn to. The rest will come as you go,” Kaworu placed a hand on Shinji’s, guiding it to the keys of the piano. “I’ll be right beside you to back you up.”

“Uh,” Shinji felt his cheeks warm under his delicate touch. The smoothness of the keys brushed against his calloused fingertips, ringing a single, clear note in the silent room. “Like that?”

Kaworu’s fingers left Shinji’s. With a well practiced dance of his fingers, Kaworu followed up Shinji’s note with a string keys. “You’re doing great. Just trust in your instincts and play.”

And so he did. The two blended together seamlessly, creating a song as a single soul, winding and twisting like a serpent. Connected, though separate, they built upon their differences to make a masterpiece of their own emotions. 

The last and final note rang out into the barren room. Tangled arms loosened from their grip, heavy silence falling upon straining ears. It was Shinji who broke it, finally. 

“Kaworu, do you want to stay with me a little longer?”

—

Stars glittered overhead like haphazardly strewn city lights, endless over the stretch of black sky. The stars twinkled fervently, almost as though they were calling out to Kaworu, like they wanted him to return home. 

“It’s nice to be here. It kinda helps you forget about everything that’s gone wrong with the world,” Shinji’s voice shook with the faintest trace of a sick laugh. 

“This world isn’t wrong. The people in it are wrong. But you, you’re here. To me, this is the perfect world based on that fact alone,” Kaworu turned to him, eyes shining brilliantly red against his pale cheeks. “I really was born to meet you.”

—

Kaworu didn’t mind that Shinji followed him to his apartment. In fact, he was happy to see the shy Lilin following close behind like a lost puppy. He reached out to take his hand, happiness bursting through at Shinji’s lack of resistance. He was finally getting somewhere. 

And as they wordlessly agreed to share a bed, tossing away the days clothes without second thought, Shinji was once again met with those odd scars. Kaworu could feel his gaze upon his skin, unsure what to say. 

“Can you tell me now? If not, that’s okay. I just— I just don’t want you to feel like you have to hide anything from me,” Shinji stumbled through his unprepared words, but his point was made. Kaworu crumbled a bit. 

“Oh, I’ve had them all of my life, for the most part. I don’t quite remember I suppose,” Kaworu hummed, twisting together a lie as quickly and seamlessly as he could. “I believe it was a burn from an Eva test. They started my training very young.”

Shinji nodded, silently thankful that he hadn’t been brought up with such trauma as a young child. But either way, he was familiar with burn scars, hell, his own father had them. But these weren’t the glistening welts of scorched flesh, these looked different. 

Like ripped flesh, torn apart and stitched back together like pieces of a puzzle. 

Kaworu wouldn’t lie. Shinji could accept that he wasn’t comfortable. Maybe he truly didn’t know the source. Either way, he was too tired to care. 

As he slowly drifted into sleep, he felt the brush of Kaworu’s lips ghosting over the delicate skin of his eyelid. 

“Sleep tight, Shinji,” Kaworu murmured softly. “I look forward to our shared tomorrow.”

—

Sleepless nights, curled fingers, nightmarish events, a first and second kiss, endless trauma, repressed feelings. 

And there, floating just out of reach, Kaworu smiled.

“Shinji Ikari, you get to decide the fate of humanity.”

“Kaworu, you  _ lied  _ to me! You’re just like everyone else! I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” Shinji could tell he was crying, but he's tears were washed away in the LCL.

A tremor ripped through the Terminal Dogma, the battle raging onwards overhead. They were running out of time, the bolts and screws tying together the metal sheets beginning to loosen under the pressure. Shinji felt the same, feeling the last restraint he had fading away. 

A pained grunt, and Shinji lurched forward, Unit 01’s hand now wrapped firmly around Kaworu’s delicate frame. Kaworu didn’t flinch.

“Shinji, I never lied to you. Everything I shared with you was the truth. I only want happiness for you.” Kaworu closed his eyes, the corners of his lips twitching upwards, a relaxed smile as he accepted his fate. 

“You were my home, Shinji Ikari.”

Silence. Overwhelming silence. 

Neither of them moved, Kaworu completely giving himself to Shinji. Shinji felt his arms shake, fingers barely brushing against the trigger that would do it, that would end it all, that would end his own humanity. 

Kaworu did not stop smiling. On one hand, he looked beautiful, but on the other, Shinji felt sick. He felt the tense in his muscles  _ begging  _ him to release, to act upon the darkest desires in his heart. For the first time, Shinji could inflict an ounce of the pain he had experienced throughout his life on someone else. The thought made his heart quicken, grimace stretching into a sick smile as he felt his whole being pull into this twisted fantasy of his. 

He was sucked out of his mind when the silence was interrupted. Kaworu moved frantically, desperate to escape Unit 01’s grasp. Shinji, unsure of what was happening, instinctively squeezed tighter, adamant not to lose his opportunity. The look on Kaworu’s face was enough to send him stumbling backwards, had he not been safe inside the cockpit. 

Anger, frustration, a scowl on Kaworu’s face. All emotions Shinji had never seen grace the alabaster features of the angel before him. He appeared human, despite it all. 

And, with inhuman strength, Kaworu was freed. 

Shinji felt resistance against Unit 01’s fingers, prying them open with the strength of an angel. He looked down at the boy before him, watched as his desperation forced him to show another side of him Shinji never knew existed. Angelic. Godlike. 

Great white wings burst from Kaworu’s back, his form seeming to shift as if made of light, tarnished by the splotches of a horrible red that streaked from the base of his new appendages. 

Shinji let go. 

In an instant, Kaworu was above Unit 01, raising a hand towards the artificial metal sky above. From his fingertips shone rays of rainbow light, an AT field, shielding them from what seemed to be the husks of the Terminal Dogma itself. 

Shinji watched in horror as Kaworu’s AT field weakened, enough so that Unit 01 began to take damage from falling equipment. Even the stirs of the thought to be defeated mass-produced Eva’s rustling at the fringes of Kaworu’s vision seemed perfectly timed. Kaworu noticed, noticed how futile his efforts were, how his plans were going so wrong, everything was wrong,  _ he  _ was wrong—

“Shinji, get out of Unit 01!” Kaworu shouted, his voice booming over the endless explosions and crashes around them. “You need to get out of here!”

Before Shinji could retaliate, before he could deny him any more of his damned orders, Unit 01 operated on its own. Forcibly ejecting Shinji’s entry plug, releasing all control and severing their connection. Shinji watched in horror as the plug was pried open, light shining in as the LCL drained away. He coughed, choking on the last of the fluid still in his lungs. He couldn’t even react when he felt Kaworu’s arms around him, lifting him out of the entry plug without a word. 

The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was the shrinking shape of Unit 01, overrun by reawakened mass-produced Eva’s. He felt like he lost something—some _ one _ — dear to him. The last person on earth who cared about him. 

In the safety of Kaworu’s arms as they rose through the crumbling architecture of NERV, Shinji fell asleep. 

\--

  
  


Shinji woke up, hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. He glanced at the ceiling, expecting the familiar cold white of his hospital room. But it wasn’t. He was outside. The stars hanging overhead. 

“Shinji.”

A familiar voice. One that he shouldn’t be hearing. His imagination, for sure. After all, he was alone now. Officially. The last on earth. 

“Shinji Ikari.”

Shinji’s eyes blinked open. He couldn’t feel anything anymore. Not the sand digging into his skin, nor the ocean lapping at his ankles. Or even the hand that had placed itself in his own empty palm. 

He turned his head, staring blankly at the figure beside him. 

Warm red eyes watched him with a sad expression. Kaworu was back, but not quite. Not the same. Angelic, now, in ways Shinji can’t quite fathom. A presence far too large for him to be splayed beside him in the LCL stained sands.

“Shinji, I’m sorry,” Kaworu smiled weakly. “This wasn’t the happiness you deserved.”

Shinji let his gaze wander over the large wings that had sprouted from Kaworu’s back. He could see the painful wounds where the scars had once been, could see the torn and bloodied flesh that seemed out of place on such an ethereal being. Kaworu didn’t deserve the burden of a human form. 

“You could’ve told me,” Shinji murmured, looking back up at the sky above. Despite the world seeming to end around them, the sky remained exactly the same. “You didn't have to hide what—who—you are.”

Kaworu chuckled. He seemed tired for the first time in his life, having spent all his energy trying to protect the boy beside him. The boy who made him realize that the world of Lilin did not deserve to be destroyed. The boy that made his heart rebel from his soul, Adam’s soul, and fail his one and only mission. 

“Can I kiss you, Shinji?” He held back from saying “for one last time?”

Shinji nodded, too exhausted to sit up. Kaworu hung over him, placing Shinji’s head in his lap, and leaned down to rest his lips on the human’s. 

It was soft, gentle, and slightly nervous. Shinji felt his face get wet, opening his eyes to see Kaworu’s tears spilling over his cheeks. Shinji had never seen him cry before. Shinji hadn’t seen Kaworu do a lot of normal things. But now, at the height of showing off just how  _ not  _ human Kaworu was, he seemed to show it more than some of the people he knew and cared about. 

Misato. Asuka. Rei. 

His father. 

“Shinji, I’m so sorry,” Kaworu spoke, voice shaking. “You made me realize that the Lilin are worth protecting. That  _ you  _ were worth protecting. But there’s only one way to ensure that happens.”

Shinji watched as the collar, a decoration he often ignored out of respect, began to activate. Red shards with deadly points materialized from thin air, rotating around the circumference of Kaworu’s neck. 

With one last smile, Kaworu murmured his last words. 

“This wasn’t the happiness you desired.”

And just as it had started, Shinji was once again alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> me: why does kaworu have to fucking die in every movie/show  
also me: kills kaworu
> 
> you can find me at rosesapphire.tumblr.com!
> 
> kudos/comments help tremendously! esp when i get back into the groove of writing after awhile. 
> 
> for readers of my other fics: updates are coming soon, i promise :3
> 
> thanks for reading this far!


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